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Tracing flight attendants’ path from nurse to model to professional

An overview of the Museum of Flight’s second Style in the Aisle exhibit, which is scheduled to run from Saturday, Jan. 29, through May 30, 2011. (Elliot Suhr/Seattlepi.com) | Style in the aisle photo gallery

Flight attendants, and air travel, have come a long way since Boeing invented the profession eight decades ago, but it hasn’t exactly been a straight line.

Boeing hired nurses to be the first flight attendants, and had them dress as such, according to Geoff Nunn, exhibits developer for Seattle’s Museum of Flight, whose second ‘Style in the Aisle’ exhibit is set to run from Saturday through May 30.

‘Air travel at the time was still in its infancy. Planes flew low, so they were subject to a lot more turbulence,’ he said. ‘People were nervous about flying even more so than they are today, and so having a nurse on board was intended to convey a sense of safety and to help passengers feel more comfortable.’

Some early flight attendant uniforms had nurselike capes and hats. But uniforms soon got more military in appearance, with long wool skirts, blazers and ties. The exhibit shows a ‘beautiful Boeing green’ that matches the company’s airliners from the 1930s.

‘A lot of the military styling was modeled after nautical uniforms as well, because airlines at the time were competing with cruise lines,’ Nunn said.

A Northwest Airlines uniform from 1945 is Navy, with airplane-emblazoned brass buttons. Oh, and a mink stole.

‘At that time Northwest had just opened up transcontinental routes and was about get international routes, and so they were starting to compete with PanAm,’ Nunn explained. ‘PanAm flight attendants at the time had pearls.’

So the mink was intended to top the pearls, he said. ‘We’re not entirely sure, but we suspect that they actually just wore them while walking through the airport or in publicity photos.’

The new exhibit features 12 uniforms, two-thirds of them new since the first Style in the Aisle, in 2008. In fact, many of the new outfits were donated by former flight attendants who visited the first show.

The first high-fashion uniforms, such as a brown TWA design by Oleg Cassini, arrived in the 1950s.

Things had shifted from flight attendants as nurses to flight attendants as models. Then came the ‘Air Strip,’ courtesy of Braniff International airline and designer Emilio Pucci.

‘We had this girl go through the motions to show you just what’s coming off at Braniff International,’ an ad proclaimed. It went on to describe a series of outfit changes from the flight attendant’s arrival at the airport, through greeting passengers on the plane and serving meals to after dinner, when ‘Our hostess Zip slips out of the (serving dress), revealing the way-out outfit on the right. …

‘Each change is made in a flash, which allows her to give you constant attention, from the time you take off to the time you land.’

Television commercials showed a woman performing the ‘Air Strip.’

Pucci also designed harlequin-pattern dresses, with matching tights and hats, featuring Mexican and South American instruments and folk art.

While Pucci’s Braniff outfits may have been the most outlandish ever to go behind a beverage cart, they were not the only examples of outrageous sexualization of flight attendants.

David Crystal’s 1974 design for Western Airlines, for instance, features a navy skirt that can be removed to reveal red short shorts.

In line with the liberation movement at the time, the same flight attendants wearing these increasingly sexy uniforms were fighting to be treated more as professionals, pushing back against traditional requirements that they be young, single and, well, hot.

The same era saw the birth of the theme flight. Alaska Airlines, for instance, celebrated its new flights to Siberia with ‘Golden Samovar Service,’ featuring flight attendants in Cossack get-ups serving coffee liquors and cocktails from giant gilded samovars.

In 1969, Airwest removed a bunch of seats from their planes and called them ‘spaceships’ (get it?). To go along with this, Oleg Cassini designed futuristic uniforms featuring side-buttoning tops.

Along with much of America, flight attendant uniforms got more conservative, and corporate, in the 1980s.

‘Some of that was due in part to the Airline Deregulation Act,’ Nunn said. ‘Airlines in head-to-head competition began to approach air travel much more as a business, as opposed to an experience, and so they started to dress their flight crews in more businesslike attire.’

Safety and security concerns emerged again, driving airlines to want to make flight crews to appear more as authority figures and safety experts, he said. And the relaxing of age restrictions meant there were more flight attendants who couldn’t pull off hot pants and short shorts, he added.

More recently, high style has reemerged in flight attendant uniforms. The newest outfit in the new Style in the Aisle is from 1985, but the exhibit’s photos feature more-recent events, such as Delta’s 2006 rollout of uniforms designed by Richard Tyler.

‘A lot of them are trying to get back to that sort of marketing aspect and hiring high-fashion designers,’ Nunn said. They’re also bringing back flair items, such as scarves and hats, and retro uniforms and plane liveries.

Perhaps the biggest addition to the new exhibit is a single Hawaiian shirt.

‘After the last exhibit we had several male flight attendants say, ‘What about us?” Nunn explained. So men are represented by the shirt, from United Airlines’ Hawaii service, in 1974.

Here’s a photo gallery of the 2008 exhibit, a 2007 show of historical uniforms by Alaska Airlines flight attendants and Celine Dion modeling a new Air Canada flight attendant uniform in 2004.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.